Whatever happened to training hard!!

Gosh, why has no one else thought of this? You are like the coming of Christ for the running world. I think you should publish a book.

So if I just run faster all my dreams will come true?

ytu56 wrote:

So if I just run faster all my dreams will come true?

They certainly will!

blood/sweat/ tears wrote:

I feel colleges would have a lot more runners at 14:00 5ks if they followed this plan. Obviously the risk of injury goes up but it does for any elite runner trying to get to the next level.

Funny you say that, because that is the way most college runners already train.

Ok, so all 14 flat 5ker's should run between 6:15 and 6:30 on your their training runs. Somehow I think most of them already do this. The problem is that in college many runners will take their easy training runs below 6:00 and essentially make every run a tempo run. This leads to breakdown because the physical body needs to rest after hard workouts for it to get stronger. It doesn't recover when your heart has to work hard everyday. Think of it this way. Say I broke a bone in my foot. If I didn't let it rest it would not heal. However, if I rest my broken bone and use my foot only lightly, it will heal faster. Actually, my bone will be even stronger once healed then it was before. Therefore, in running we break our bodies down with hard workouts and need to let them recover correctly so that we get stronger and can do more hard workouts at fast paces.

To a large extent I agree with you. I think that it’s particularly true of long runs. Going 5:30+ for a kilometer is just WAY too slow. You need to be at least somewhat challenged in these runs.

"someone that can run a 14:13 5k should be doing 6:13 for his easy pace."

I'm not sure who you are training with to get such an idea as runners who aspire to better themself "just waddles out the door after sittin on his ass all day and runs 10 miles at 8 minute pace". When I was in college which wasn't all that long ago we didn't run anything slower than about 6:30 pace and many of our easy day runs were sub 6 pace. I'd say that what you are asking runners to do (run between 6 to 6:30 pace for their non workout days) is already happening. Maybe you just run with a lot of slow runners. I just looked back on my college running logs and our average pace (we ran as a group each Sunday for this) for the weekly "long SLOW" run of 12 to 16 miles averaged 6:06 pace for all 4 years.

College runners run faster on their off days than you think. I can't remember any of my team mates running 7 min pace (or at least not when we ran as a group) on any of their runs unless it was coming back from an injury.